Of course, he knew this envy was ridiculous, and beyond mean: he had grown up with parents, and Jude hadn’t. And he knew that Harold and Julia felt an affection for him as well, as much as he did for them. They had both seen every one of his films, and both sent him long and detailed reviews of them, always praising his performance and making intelligent comments about his costars and the cinematography. (The only one they had never seen—or at least never commented on—was The Prince of Cinnamon, which was the film he had been shooting when Jude had tried to kill himself. He had never seen it himself.) They read every article about him—like his reviews, he avoided these articles—and bought a copy of every magazine that featured him. On his birthday, they would call and ask him what he was going to do to celebrate, and Harold would remind him of how old he was getting. At Christmas, they always sent him something—a book, along with a jokey little gift, or a clever toy that he would keep in his pocket to fiddle with as he talked on the phone or sat in the makeup chair. At Thanksgiving, he and Harold would sit in the living room watching the game, while Julia kept Jude company in the kitchen.
“We’re running low on chips,” Harold would say.
“I know,” he’d say.
“Why don’t you go get more?” Harold would say.
“You’re the host,” he’d remind Harold.
“You’re the guest.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Call Jude and get him to bring us more.”
“You call him!”
“No, you call him.”
“Fine,” he’d say. “Jude! Harold wants more chips!”
“You’re such a confabulator, Willem,” Harold would say, as Jude came in to refill the bowl. “Jude, this was completely Willem’s idea.”
But mostly, he knew that Harold and Julia loved him because he loved Jude; he knew they trusted him to take care of Jude—that was who he was to them, and he didn’t mind it. He was proud of it.
Lately, however, he had been feeling differently about Jude, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. They had been sitting on the sofa late one Friday night—he just home from the theater, Jude just home from the office—and talking, talking about nothing in particular, when he had almost leaned over and kissed him. But he had stopped himself, and the moment had passed. But since then, he had been revisited by that impulse again: twice, three times, four times.
It was beginning to worry him. Not because Jude was a man: he’d had sex with men before, everyone he knew had, and in college, he and JB had drunkenly made out one night out of boredom and curiosity (an experience that had been, to their mutual relief, entirely unsatisfying: “It’s really interesting how someone so good-looking can be such a turnoff,” had been JB’s exact words to him). And not because he hadn’t always felt a sort of low-key hum of attraction for Jude, the way he felt for more or less all his friends. It was because he knew that if he tried anything, he would have to be certain about it, because he sensed, powerfully, that Jude, who was casual about nothing, certainly wouldn’t be casual about sex.
Jude’s sex life, his sexuality, had been a subject of ongoing fascination for everyone who knew him, and certainly for Willem’s girlfriends. Occasionally, it had come up among the three of them—he and Malcolm and JB—when Jude wasn’t around: Was he having sex? Had he ever? With whom? They had all seen people looking at him at parties, or flirting with him, and in every case, Jude had remained oblivious.
“That girl was all over you,” he’d say to Jude as they walked home from one party or another.
“What girl?” Jude would say.
They talked about it with one another because Jude had made it clear he wouldn’t discuss it with any of them: when the topic was raised, he would give them one of his stares and then change the subject with a declarativeness that was impossible to misinterpret.
“Has he ever spent the night away from home?” asked JB (this was when he and Jude were living on Lispenard Street).
“Guys,” he’d say (the conversation made him uncomfortable), “I don’t think we should be talking about this.”
“Willem!” JB would say. “Don’t be such a pussy! You’re not betraying any confidences. Just tell us: yes or no. Has he ever?”
He’d sigh. “No,” he’d say.
There would be a silence. “Maybe he’s asexual,” Malcolm would say, after a while.
“No, that’s you, Mal.”
“Fuck off, JB.”
“Do you think he’s a virgin?” JB would ask.
“No,” he’d say. He didn’t know why he knew this, but he was certain he wasn’t.
“It’s such a waste,” JB would say, and he and Malcolm would look at each other, knowing what was coming next. “His looks’ve been wasted on him. I should’ve gotten his looks. I would’ve had a good time with them, at least.”
After a while, they grew to accept it as part of who Jude was; they added the subject to the list of things they knew not to discuss. Year after year passed and he dated no one, they saw him with no one. “Maybe he’s living some hot double life,” Richard once suggested, and Willem had shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. But really, although he had no proof of this, he knew that Jude wasn’t. It was in this same, proof-less way that he assumed Jude was probably gay (though maybe not), and probably hadn’t ever had a relationship (though he really hoped he was wrong about this). And as much as Jude claimed otherwise, Willem wasn’t ever convinced that he wasn’t lonely, that he didn’t, in some small dark part of himself, want to be with someone. He remembered Lionel and Sinclair’s wedding, where it had been Malcolm with Sophie and he with Robin and JB—though they hadn’t been speaking then—with Oliver, and Jude with no one. And although Jude hadn’t seemed bothered by this, Willem had looked at him across the table and had felt sad for him. He didn’t want Jude to get old alone; he wanted him to be with someone who would take care of him and be attracted to him. JB was right: it was a waste.
And so was this what this was, this attraction? Was it fear and sympathy that had morphed itself into a more palatable shape? Was he convincing himself he was attracted to Jude because he couldn’t stand to see him alone? He didn’t think so. But he didn’t know.
The person he would’ve once discussed this with was JB, but he couldn’t speak to JB about this, even though they were friends again, or at least working toward friendship. After they had returned from Morocco, Jude had called JB and the two of them had gone out for dinner, and a month later, Willem and JB had gone out on their own. Oddly, though, he found it much more difficult to forgive JB than Jude had, and their first meeting had been a disaster—JB showily, exaggeratedly blithe; he seething—until they had left the restaurant and started yelling at each other. There they had stood on deserted Pell Street—it had been snowing, lightly, and no one else was out—accusing each other of condescension and cruelty; irrationality and self-absorption; self-righteousness and narcissism; martyrdom and cluelessness.
“You think anyone hates themselves as much as I do?” JB had shouted at him. (His fourth show, the one that documented his time on drugs and with Jackson, had been titled “The Narcissist’s Guide to Self-Hatred,” and JB had referenced it several times during their dinner as proof that he had punished himself mightily and publicly and had now been reformed.)
“Yeah, JB, I do,” he’d shouted back at him. “I think Jude hates himself far more than you could ever hate yourself, and I think you knew that and you made him hate himself even more.”
“You think I don’t know that?” JB had yelled. “You think I don’t fucking hate myself for that?”
“I don’t think you hate yourself enough for it, no,” he’d yelled back. “Why did you do that, JB? Why did you do that to him, of all people?” And then, to his surprise, JB had sunk, defeated, to the curb. “Why didn’t you ever love me the way you love him, Willem?” he asked.